


death, be not proud

by Knightblazer



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Character Death, Extended Metaphors, F/M, Familial Abuse, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Suicide Attempt, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 01:02:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14461713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Knightblazer/pseuds/Knightblazer
Summary: Death has always been a part of Bruce's life. (Introspection/experimental, spoilers forInfinity War)





	death, be not proud

**Author's Note:**

> [Death Be Not Proud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Be_Not_Proud_\(poem\)) is a sonnet by John Donne.

_ Death, be not proud, though some have called thee  
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;  
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow  
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. _

*

Bruce is twelve the first time he sees death.

Death appears to him in the form of his mother, whose body lies cold and broken on the kitchen floor, her blood staining the tiles. But there is no time to grieve, for the only thing that Bruce can feel is fear. Fear, because death does not only come from his mother but from his father, too.

He remembers screaming as he tries to scramble away from his father’s wrath, struggling in his grip, his body far too small for his father’s too big hands. Death rises before him in the monstrous form of his father as thick fingers wrap around his throat and slowly start to squeeze him dry of life.

Bruce never remembers what happens after that point, memories long engulfed by the fear and pain that his childhood brings him. But what he can recall is the brush of death’s fingertips, an icy numbness that remains with him even in the years after that fateful day.

*

Bruce is in his thirties when he meets death once again.

This time death comes to him in the form of himself, a beast created from his own mistakes. A monster who brings nothing but death and destruction, and Bruce can never forget the blood on his hands, broken bones and lives that he will always be responsible for.

He tries to run from death but it always haunts him like a plague, a disease that has no cure. Wherever he goes the curse of death follows, targeting all around him and standing alone when the dust settles and the ground under his feet has turned dark red with the blood of friends and enemies alike.

Death lives within him now, a rumbling beast that never seems to have enough, leaving its mark every time it emerges from him. Bruce wonders if this is his price for trying to play God, to have attempted to allow humans to be something they could never become. If so, then the irony is fitting—for now all he can do is take the lives he tries to save, and the knowledge of that will always stick with him.

*

Bruce is forty when he throws himself to death’s embrace.

Death, he assumes, is cold and icy, just like the winds of the arctic that bite into his skin as he treks through the snow. Its been a week after the events at Harlem and Bruce is so _tired_ , tired of knowing nothing but death and destruction especially when he now knows better than ever that he can never be free of this curse.

If death wants him so much, he thinks, then death can very well have him.

He walks for almost three days and three nights, uncaring of how his body protests, how the cold slowly shuts down his functions, bringing him right to the brink. The closer he gets to it, then perhaps the more likely it is that he will be able to succeed. 

Bruce only stops when his legs refuse to move any more, when he can feel the icy touch of death all the way in his bones, slowly freezing him from the inside. He stops and drops onto the ice on his knees, arms trembling from the cold as he fumbles out the gun from the inside of his coat.

Gloves are not very practical when he uses a gun so Bruce removes them, tossing them aside because its not like he’ll need them again after this. When he touches the gun with his now bare hands the metal sticks to his frozen skin, and the chill it emanates is the same icy coldness that he feels inside.

Bruce doesn’t blink as he opens his mouth and puts the barrel on his lips. The cold steel rests against his tongue, slowly freezing it solid as well. The tang of metal and gunpowder mixes with the cold and ice, and Bruce wonders for a moment if this is what death tastes like, if this is part of what other people experience in the moments before they die.

The same death that he’s cursed him for so long now holds him steady, makes his hands stop trembling and keeps his body still as he tightens his hold on the gun and pulls the trigger.

He hears an explosion, a roar, the cry of death ringing in his ears—and then Bruce knows no more.

*

(Or that is the fairy tale that Bruce wants to believe its true, but the reality is that he wakes up in a place warm and full of life, so far away from death itself because its now crushed underneath his heel.

When you destroy even death, what else is there left to live for?)

*

Eventually death is left behind, broken and buried as Bruce continues with his life. He learns to control the monster within him and tries to bring as much life in the world to make up for all the deaths that he had caused. Its not even a fraction of anything close to repentance, but its all somebody like him can do. But he never forgets death, for it is still a part of him, in the shape of a beast that lurks in the darkest parts of his mind.

The equilibrium stays until its broken, not by anybody else but by Bruce himself. It breaks when he sees through the monster’s eyes a suit of iron and gold falling from the broken sky above him. He sees death sweeping in to claim its newest prey but Bruce roars and jumps in, pulling Tony Stark away from death’s embrace. 

This life, he will not let death claim. 

Today, Bruce cheats death itself.

*

After that death is forgotten, a remnant of a past that Bruce can finally put behind. With the Avengers he helps more people to cheat death, and with Tony he helps to bring even more life. 

And Tony—Tony is life itself, a fire that doesn’t stop burning, a flame that doesn’t falter no matter how close the winds of death blow by. Bruce can’t help but be entranced, drawn to the warmth that is life because all he’s known until now is death. The fire that is Tony Stark melts the ice in his bones, breaths in life in parts of him he had long considered dead and gone. 

But even as tempting as it is Bruce doesn’t dare touch the fire; not when all he can picture are his hands snuffing out those same flames that he’s come to love, putting out the fire that has warmed up the cold within him. He doesn’t dare to risk it, so all he can do is to watch from afar, admiring the very same flames he will never be able to touch.

That is enough, he thinks to himself. It will have to be enough.

*

When one forgets death it returns with a vengeance, and Bruce knows that better than anybody else when all his mind shows him are the images of the city that he’s ruined, broken bones and broken lives now weighed on his hands once more like the balances of a scale. 

The water that pours down his body from the shower is cold, though its nothing like the ice cold dread that had hit him after he had woken back up. He can feel his hands trembling again as the weight of his mistakes haunt his mind, bringing back memories of a past he had thought he could leave behind.

Is this his price for having cheated death, he thinks, but he knows that question rings hollow and empty in his ears. Those are all excuses, and nothing more. He may have tried to forget about death, but death never forgets him. The curse has never left him.

He tries to say as much to Natasha later, when she promises him of a dream and a life of things he had wished with Betty once upon a time. 

_ (Where can I go? Where in the world am I not a threat?) _

When she responds Bruce wonders if that is why he had been interested in her. Death calls to death, and nothing says death like an assassin born and raised and made. But no life can come out from death, and Bruce knows he has just been deluding himself from the beginning. A half-baked attempt to have something from what he really wants.

All that he will ever have is death, and Bruce knows that is all that he deserves.

*

(After that Bruce goes to sleep for two years, trapped within a voidless dream that death creates for him as it takes its chance to live its own life that is not defined by blood and sacrifice.

But even as death, the dream still ends eventually.)

*

The final time death comes for him, she takes on the form of a god and calls herself Hela, and her sights are on nothing else but Asgard.

Asgard may not be his home but it is still important to his friend, and even though Bruce can’t afford to change he fights the best he can, because its what he should do. Valkyrie tries to stick close by to him but they’re easily outnumbered hundred to one, and Thor is nowhere to be found after he went charging towards his sister.

Still, this is a fight that Bruce knows he can’t lose. 

He fends off their attackers while the Asgardian common folk board their escape vessel, using the blaster he had managed to grab from somewhere. Monsters swarm towards them left and right but Bruce gives no quarter, and blasts whatever catches his attention. Almost everyone is on the ship, he just needs to keep this up for a while more and then he can—

Something jumps at him, sudden and abrupt, and Bruce has no time to react before he’s pushed to the ground, head banging against the surface of the Bifrost. He winces, vision going momentarily blurry, and before he has a chance to recover a body straddles over his and there’s a hand around his throat.

“A lone human among the fray,” he hears the voice snarl, cold and unyielding, and his vision clears up enough for him to make out the figure of Hela above him. The goddess of death looks at him in disgust as her hand tightens, making him gasp. “What do you think a mere mortal like you can do against death itself?”

If Bruce has an answer to that, he cannot give it; all he can do is trash around uselessly as death holds him in her grip, his body’s instinctive desire to stay alive overriding everything else in his mind. 

His trashing apparently amuses Hela, as a terrible, wicked smile crosses her face. “You are nothing against death, human. Know your place and accept it.”

In another time, another place ( _another life_ )—Bruce would have done that. A lifetime ago he would have thrown himself into death headfirst, would have let allowed it to claim him the first chance he was given. But he’s lived with death for long enough, since he was a child until today that he knows now that death is not his curse to bear. What he holds within himself is not death but another life, a life that is his responsibility to carry.

Its with that knowledge that he moves, feeling the _life_ that burns within giving him the strength that he needs to reach up and pull the goddess’s hand away from his throat and shove her off him.

He gets up on his feet once she’s off, the life inside of him burning brighter now, ready to jump into battle, to roar and show his existence to the world. It is not death but life, a part of him now made whole, and Bruce understands that now. Even if he is not present, he is still in this world, within the other life that is also his.

“I’m not ready to die yet,” he says, and grins at the way her face darkens at his defiance. “You’re the one who should know your place, puny god.”

With those words he lets the life within him take over, tossing away his curse of death and trading it for something better.

*

 

(At the very end death comes in the form of _Thanos_ , who systematically destroys everything Bruce has built up throughout his entire life and then leaves half the universe weeping with a snap of his fingers.

Bruce stares at the ashes of what once had been his comrades, and all his mind can think of in that one horrified moment is _Tony_.)

**Author's Note:**

> As much as I loved _Thor: Ragnarok_ and _Infinity War_ , I was a little annoyed that Bruce was mostly regaled to the comic relief role for both of those movies. This fic came out mostly as a result of me thinking of a cool scene where Bruce was up against Hela because _hello, man who tried to die here_. Would have been super cool imo.
> 
> Now here's me hoping the next Avengers movie will give me that emotional payoff for Bruce Banner that we all deserve.
> 
> (Also pls raise your hand if you cried over THAT FUCKING HUG between Bruce and Tony. Thank u for validating me, Russos.)


End file.
